Aftermath
by Titan of Saturn
Summary: A possible, and yet improbable future. A look into the mind of one kunoichi and her interactions with her loved ones as time grows old. Set in the future of Naruto, at the end of the war with Sound. AU.


When the war is finally over, they have two memorial stones instead of one. The honoring service has almost all the village there. Names are read from a scroll, the name of each ninja who died in the war. With each said, another is added to the stone. And each time one is added, the friends and family of the ninja stand in honor of them.

There are many names.

It is Sakura who presides over the ceremony, because both Tsunade and Jiraiya are dead. There was an almost chaos in the power vacuum, because no one knew anyone like the Sannin to take the position. Sakura stepped up in the confusion because she'd been Tsunade's student, had trained in the Hokage's tower, had fought on the front lines and lived. She knew what she was doing, knew the secrets and policies only one who had spent every day in that office could know. And she wasn't any weakling.

Sakura wishes that she hadn't done it. She'd meant it to be temporary, a band-aid until the elders elected the next leader, but she'd been so good at it. She been with the team that had taken Sound down, she was the only available heir of the Sannin, and a legend in her own right. The elders elected her. She is the youngest Hokage in history, younger even than the Fourth.

When Naruto comes back almost a year later, he smiles at her and congratulates her, and Sakura can't stand to look in his eyes. It was _his_ dream, not hers, and she feels ashamed that she's taken that away from him. He says there's nothing to forgive, he can always be the Seventh Hokage. He'll probably be old and withered by then, because she was doing such a good job she'd last forever, but the Third had been really old when he'd been Hokage. It was okay.

When Sakura reaches Chouji's name, she watches as the remains of the Rookie Nine stand up, and his clan. Kiba is leaning heavily on his cane; he was lucky he could walk at all, Sakura knew. A rain-nin had shattered the kneecap, and with the rest of his team dead, Kiba had had to get home on his own. It had caused permanent damage.

Sakura examined Shikamaru, traced the scar along his throat from where he'd slit it to kill another ninja. She'd been there when he'd done that. It was the Sound Five ninja who had taken out Chouji, and Shikamaru had sacrificed his own life for revenge without so much as a second thought. Sakura almost hadn't had enough Chakra left to heal him enough for transport back to the Leaf.

Ino stood beside Shika, a soft arm around him to keep him steady, and Sakura remembered watching her as she finally got a mind hold on her opponent, calmly pulling a kunai, and shoving it into the man's jugular. Sakura hadn't even known that Ino had learned the Yamanaka Clan's ultimate Mind Swap technique, one that kept the user's body from harm. When she came to in her own body, Ino didn't have the slightest crack in her expressionless mask. It scared Sakura to think her friend could kill someone with so little emotion.

Shino stood the strongest; he'd been the defensive line General and hadn't gone with them into Sound, but he'd protected Konoha hard and sure and for that he deserved no less praise.

Kakashi had specified in his will that his name be placed as close to Obito Uchiha's as possible. Sakura felt good honoring that request, and shed a couple of tears, but most of her grieving was done already. Kakashi had died months ago. Gai bawled about honor and rivals and memory, and while Sakura didn't understand half of it, she understood the intent. She was happy Gai had lived to be here, she knew Kakashi would appreciate it.

When she reached Hiashi's name, few stood, and Hanabi was not among them. When she read Neji's, she was pleasantly surprised to find many did. When Hanabi stood grimly next to her sister, Sakura nodded to her in respect for the statement she had just made. When the new Hyuuga Clan leader moved to merge the two houses, she would be behind it one hundred percent. Next to her, Hinata wept tears from unseeing eyes. Sakura isn't sure what exactly had caused it; the Hyuuga guarded its secrets well and one of their doctors had tended to the girl, but Sakura did know it had something to do with a forbidden Byakugan technique. Hinata had saved her life with it.

At Rock Lee's name, Sakura swore half the village stood. It was here that Sakura finally cried. She tried to hold it back, because she was Hokage, but she had loved Lee with all her heart. Sakura turned away from the podium and sobbed into her hands, hard, for several minutes. When she was done, she regained her composure and turned back to the crowd. Every single person was standing. Touched, Sakura let out a couple more sobs, smiling, and thanked them.

Tenten had a very new and thick scar that ran from her forehead down to her cheek, curving along the side of her face and just barely missing her eye. She'd flowered as the General for the front lines, a natural leader that was smart on her feet, skilled in combat, and liked well enough to be followed without trouble. She wasn't crying, she stood tall and proud and in honor of her teammate. Sakura was envious.

She listed many more names that she knew, and many she did not, and when she was finally finished she went back to her office and wrote out her will. It was a morbid experience.

Five years after Naruto returned to the village – Sakura was twenty-two by then and considered the greatest Hokage the Leaf Village has ever had, next to the Fourth, of course – Hunter-nin brought in Sasuke. Sakura spent a sleepless night deciding what to do, the laws were clear. Traitors and Missing-nin were to be executed upon capture. But Sakura knew what had happened, she'd been there. Sasuke had turned on Orochimaru, had been pivotal in his defeat. He and Naruto spent a year tracking and killing Akatsuki when no one in Leaf could, when they were vulnerable and open to attack by the organization and war had left them without enough strong ninja to do it themselves. When they had finally tracked and killed Itachi, Naruto had let Sasuke run and returned to the Village.

But Sasuke was here now, and she was Hokage. The next morning she went to visit him. Time had been good to the Sharingan wielder, he was tall (taller than Naruto, and that was saying something) filled out, and his skin had a healthy glow to it that hadn't been there when she'd seen him in Sound.

He asked her what she'd decided before she could say anything, and Sakura's smile was pained. She asked him if he would be able to handle being reinstated into the Leaf. He told her he knew the policy for Missing-nin. Sakura took that as a no, especially when after she explained she could pull it off Sasuke didn't say anything.

Sakura then asked him if he had children. She could feel his surprise at the question, but his face didn't show anything. When he didn't answer, she explained that she needed to know, but that she promised not to make any sort of record of his response.

He did; a son, three years old, and twins, a boy and a girl around a year and a half. Sakura nodded, and asked if their mother knew who he was. Sasuke told her that his wife knew nothing of the Sharingan, but that she'd always known he was a missing-nin. Before she left, Sasuke told her of a shrine on his property that he'd missed visiting.

After Sakura reached her office, she locked herself in and cried. He had known, had known her decision and that if he had told her he had no children, Sakura would have arranged to create an opportunity for him to escape. It would have damaged her standing as Hokage, it would have lost her the trust of her village and the council, but she would have done it. And Sasuke knew that she couldn't risk making that rift if he was fulfilled in life.

After Sasuke's execution, she couldn't even speak to Naruto.

When Sakura felt that a sufficient amount of time had passed, she called Naruto to her office and assigned him an S-class mission. She gave him two scrolls, one much larger than the other, and told him to deliver them to Sasuke's wife.

Naruto didn't look confused. Sakura figured that should surprise her, but it didn't. He took the scrolls, bowed to her formally (Sakura almost cried at that) and then left to go track Sasuke's family down.

He didn't come back.

Sakura knew that it was intentional. She knew that Naruto had completed his mission and delivered the scroll containing all the information the woman would need as the mother of three Uchiha children with the potential to gain the Sharingan. She knew that her own scroll, explaining who she was and what had happened to Sasuke, rested in the woman's possession. She knew that Sasuke's wife had received a verbal warning from Naruto about how dangerous it was for anyone to know about Sasuke or the Sharingan, especially ninja.

Sakura knew that Naruto had opened the Uchiha family scroll, with the intention to destroy any mention of the Mangenkyou Sharingan, only to find it already done. And Sakura also knew that Naruto would spend the rest of his life living quietly somewhere near where Sasuke's family lived, watching over them and training them, to repay the debt she knew existed but not what for.

Sakura didn't send Hunter-nin after him. The S-class mission she'd sent him on was marked down as long term with an unknown end-date. Naruto's friends didn't stop asking about him, about where he was and when he was coming back, for eight years.

Sakura thought that maybe she wasn't cut out to be Hokage after all.

She is forty-seven when she steps down. Sakura leaves behind the title Hokage at what the villagers think is far too young. Konohamaru takes her place as the Seventh and turns Sakura's work of restoration and power into what is called the Golden Age of Konoha. Sakura put the Leaf Village back together, and Konohamaru lifted them to the sky.

Regardless, Sakura is still considered the Greatest Hokage. She is generally considered greater than the Fourth, though that is disputed by many. It's not really possible to be greater than a martyr, after all.

After she retires, Sakura doesn't go back into service. Instead, she opens a ramen stand called 'Mittsu' that is known for its expedient service. She serves most kinds of ramen, as well as umeboshi and tomatoes. The ones who get it smile at her sadly and try to come often; the ones who don't whisper and gossip about the oddity. Some start asking about Naruto again. No one says anything about Sasuke.

When she is fifty two and tired, she hires a young man named Dei to help her run the store. He's brown haired and green eyed and everything they weren't, but somehow he reminds her of Naruto and Sasuke. Sakura treats him like the son she never had, and when he's married two years later Sakura gives him the shop as a wedding gift.

He swears to her that he won't change a thing about the place even though she didn't ask him for that vow, and Sakura wonders just how much the boy really knows. Entertaining him with stories of her youth was one thing, understanding what Mittsu meant to her was another. Sakura decides not to ask him about it. She figures he heard something from a customer, one of the last of the rookie nine maybe, and doesn't think till later that maybe he found her book. She wrote it with excerpts of the journals – diaries – that she's dutifully recorded her life in all these years. She ends up leaving the journals with Konohamaru to store in the Hokage's personal library. It means everything to her that the truth of what happened is never lost.

She leaves Konohagakure and travels, pulling strength from within herself for one more journey. It's nearly five years before she finds what she is looking for. The girl who answers the door is far too young to be one of the twins, but she has dark hair and pale skin and eyes that seem like pools of darkness until they're hit with the right light, and you realize they're really a strange bluish-green that shouldn't be an eye color. She is in the right place – she _is_ – but this girl isn't who Sakura came to see.

The woman was old, like Sakura, and she had a stern but kindly air about her. Sakura has no trouble seeing Sasuke with her. She is strong and caring and the perfect kind of woman to be a wife, mother, grandmother; Sakura can also see that if things were to suddenly spin out of control, this woman could handle it with a cool and rational head.

Sakura feels suddenly like a twelve year old Genin who knows nothing and isn't worth the time she takes to do her hair in the morning. It's a disconcerting feeling that she has trouble shaking off, but Sakura does her best to ignore it in favor of talking with the woman who Sasuke trusted to bare his children. They sit across each other and speak of meaningless things, waiting for the granddaughter to come back with Sasuke's four children. Sakura wants to ask about that, because she had only known of three, but she doesn't.

When they arrive, they are on edge and carrying weapons. They relax some when they see that she is just an old lady without ninja gear, and sit at their mother's behest. Sakura tells them who she is, and is surprised to find that they all know of her. The youngest, a girl, tells her that Uncle would never let them forget her. Sakura's heart lurches painfully, but she can't ask about him yet. First she must know them.

The older boy's name is Tessen. Sakura isn't sure weather to laugh or cry at its absurdity, but she reigns in her emotions. The twins are Suishou and Sonosuke, and the youngest is Mikomi. Sonosuke and Tessen both have children, and Mikomi is pregnant.

Sakura doesn't realize until later that she never received the mother's name, but that's okay. She called her sister automatically anyway, and everyone else seemed to call her mother, grandma, or old woman. The six of them talked well into the night, and before she left, Sakura gave her sister a carefully bound and wrapped, handwritten, copy of her book. It was unedited for information – unlike the ones she left back in Konoha – and Sakura trusted the woman to take care of it.

She made her farewell with kisses to the forehead and a question about their uncle. Sakura didn't bother resting in an inn or taking their offer to stay the night before she was on her way to the next village over. It was a long way for a civilian, but a powerful ninja could probably make it from one to the other in less than ten minutes.

It took Sakura half an hour.

She was out of breath and exhausted when she got there, and distressed to note a wheeze. She takes three pills and presses a glowing hand to her chest before she feels strong enough to walk. Sakura ignores the urge to sleep, to stop, to rest, in favor of seeking out the man she must speak with before finally going home. He opens the door before she can knock, and Sakura feels her heart skip a beat in astonishment.

Naruto looks almost exactly as he did when she last saw him thirty-eight years ago, bowing to her in the Hokage's office. She feels a sudden thankfulness that she will not live as long as he will, because Sakura has been tired of life for far too many years now. He seems equally surprised that Sakura appears so old, and his mouth drops open just a bit before he regains his composure.

He doesn't invite her in.

Sakura folds at the knees and presses her forehead to the dirt. It is more painful than it should be, and Sakura can't help but worry that she might not have enough time or strength to make it back. She asks Naruto's forgiveness before her courage fails her. She doesn't bother to tell him that she doesn't feel that she deserves it, but rather that she _needs_ it. Sakura doesn't want to sway his answer any. She wants the truth.

And Naruto gives it to her without pause, taking her by the arms and standing her up with a heartbroken look on his face. He apologized for ever letting her think that he wouldn't forgive her, and Sakura began to cry. She hasn't cried in so long, not since Naruto left, and it feels good to let go. Naruto brings her inside and sits her down, and when she's calmed enough to speak, he asks her about Konoha.

Sakura tells him everything, everything she can remember, and then tells him about the book she left with their sister incase there was anything important she forgot. He smiles and confides that he calls Sasuke's wife 'sister' too. They share a laugh that unburdens Sakura's soul, and Naruto tells tales about the growing up of the children. She knew that Tessen and Suishou had both gained the Sharingan, during an event in their youth concerning rogue ninja, and that Naruto had pretty much trained them all to be ninja since they were small, but that was all. She was happy to hear more.

After the sun rose and Naruto cooked them breakfast – instant ramen – Sakura inquired about Naruto's appearance. When he told her he had no idea, she offered to examine him. When finished, Sakura let Naruto know that his cells were frozen by the Kyuubi's chakra. She couldn't see him ever aging like this, not unless he used some of the red Chakra regularly to allow his body freedom from that hold. She also speculated that if he were to ever get in a battle where he exhausted his Chakra there would probably be some amount of accelerated aging, no matter how fast his supply was replenished.

Naruto nodded thoughtfully. Sakura didn't ask him what he planned to do.

She didn't leave until the next day, because she needed rest. She slept the whole afternoon and night before waking when Naruto did, over twelve hours, and yet she felt no better. Naruto – in that confounding, insightful way he did sometimes – asked Sakura what she was sick with. When she told him, he looked at her with fear in his eyes. She could see the 'how long?' and the 'when did this happen?' as it fell from his lips like he didn't want to know the answer. _A month at most, and I've been sick a very long time Naruto. Since before we were kids – Genin – and I've kept myself alive this long with what Tsunade-sensei taught me. It's okay._

She smiled and rested her head against Naruto's shoulder. Her answer was serene with acceptance, but Sakura still expressed concern that she wouldn't have the strength to travel back to Konohagakure. She wanted to, so badly. That Village had been her life for so many years, her mother, teacher, protector, daughter, student, friend, and home. She didn't want to die anywhere but there.

Naruto made a promise to her then. He promised he would get her back to Konoha so she could be home. He helped her travel, did the scouting and hunting and fire-building; Sakura even remembered him carrying her on his back as they approached the gates of the village, before she'd drifted off.

In Konoha, the villagers still called her Lady Hokage. Ino greeted her with joy, Kiba let out a holler and jumped with a fist in the air, absolutely thrilled to see Naruto again, Shikamaru tugged at his collar and cursed at Temari about how troublesome she was, Shino guided Hinata and muttered to her a running commentary about what was happening, just as Ino hit Shikamaru for disrespecting his wife and demanding that Chouji, as 'this bastard's best friend,' keep the guy in line. Tenten laughed from where she was standing next to Neji, and Sakura turned to see Lee running up to her with hearts in his eyes. They embraced and stayed that way for a long time, until someone behind her cleared their throat.

It was Kakashi-sensei, and standing next to him was Sasuke and Naruto, bickering already about who was taller even when it was obvious that was Sasuke. Kakashi-sensei suddenly looks short to Sakura, though she couldn't really explain why. Tsunade and Jiraiya are fighting just past them, and Sakura can see Orochimaru separating them with a look on his face that reminds her of Sasuke. He isn't wearing any make up, and he hardly looks imposing rolling his eyes like that. Tsunade gives up trying to knock sense into Jiraiya's skull and walks over to Hinata, where she promptly heals the girl's eyes. Sakura is in awe that her sensei could do that when she had tried and failed so many times.

Naruto called to bushy-brows for back-up, and Lee's place at her side was filled by Dei, who smiled and told her he'd kept his promise. Mittsu still sells ramen, umeboshi and tomatoes just like she wanted it to. Lord Seventh-Hokage Konohamaru Sarutobi apparently eats there regularly.

When she wakes up, Sakura finds herself home. The villagers still call her Lady Hokage, but Naruto's return was not even noticed. No one recognizes him, and he has had no reunion with any of the rookie nine. Sasuke, Kakashi-sensei, Chouji, Neji, and Lee are all dead. Hinata is still blind. Kiba can't jump because of his injured knee. Temari died three days before her wedding with Shikamaru. The Sannin are all lost.

That all matters, but so does the fact that she wakes to Ino, Dei, and Naruto at her bedside looking worried and then happy to see her awake. By the end of the day, each one of her childhood friends, Dei's wife, and many loyal shinobi who still call her Lady Hokage have at least stopped by for a moment to see her. Sakura feels, finally, that everything is okay.

The next day, she calls for the people closest to her to say her last words. Shikamaru is the only one who sees Naruto as Naruto, and tugs at his high collar before shaking Naruto's hand. Sakura tried to remember if Naruto was still around when Shikamaru started wearing high collared shirts to cover his scar, but she couldn't recall.

Kiba harasses the blonde stranger until Shikamaru pulls him aside, Naruto looking sad and nostalgic. Later, when he can be discrete, Kiba pulls Naruto into a fierce and welcoming hug – the one Shikamaru couldn't give him – and Naruto smiles.

Hinata comes led by a servant girl Sakura has never met, and she remembers being told yesterday that Shino died suddenly of heart problems just after she left. Hinata hasn't been led by her sunglasses wearing teammate in years.

Ino brings her son, and Sakura feels jealous. She'd met the husband, of course, and approved. She was a bride's maid at the wedding, even. But sometimes Sakura looks at Ino's family and remembers a dream she once had to have a family of her own.

Dei and his wife snuggle in the corner, and Sakura can see that Dei's wife is pregnant. This, she feels happy about. Sakura remembers a girl to girl talk she had with Dei's wife, just before she left, and is proud of her surrogate son's choice in companion.

Tenten doesn't come. Sakura doesn't really blame her.

The words she shares with them are made meaningful by the fact that they are all there listening to them. Sakura speaks until her lungs prevent her from speaking another word, and then she speaks four more.

She speaks them to everyone. To every friend alive or dead, to Lee bawling in the corner and Kakashi looking uncomfortable and Tsunade sitting at the foot of her bed with a sort of crestfallen look on her face. Sakura speaks them to her Rookie Nine and Team Gai. She speaks them to Dei and Konohamaru and her sister miles away. She speaks them to Naruto holding her right hand and to Sasuke holding her left.

_I love you all._

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own the character's or universe of Naruto. I am not writing this story for profit. This story is an AU.

_TS_


End file.
